Once they stepped onto the Imperial Road, the journey went smoothly. Li Chen and You An made swift progress and finally reached the wilderness where the Coldwind Valley Battlefield lay toward the end of June.
At the end of the Imperial Road stood a magnificent octagonal tower, a full hundred feet tall, rising like a great building.
It was the landmark of this place, the War Fortress known as the Octagonal Fort.
Its base measured more than thirty zhang across and occupied roughly fifteen mu. Around it, ordinary houses resembling those of rural towns were arranged in the pattern of an eight-trigram compass, with clear divisions between the inner and outer sections and everything in orderly rows.
Beyond these stood a sprawling jumble of dwellings, clearly erected by cultivators from various quarters themselves.
Thankfully, they still followed the rules extending out from the interior, leaving unobstructed the eight main roads radiating outward and the concentric ring roads.
Before they even reached the fortress, they had already seen many merchants and travelers coming and going. All manner of Mechanism Puppets and pedestrians moved among them, seemingly oblivious to the enormous void beneath the distant sky, which stretched for several li like a vast black curtain hanging on a wall.
To Li Chen and You An, that spatial rift resembled a colossal beast crouching on the desolate plain several li away, its bloody maw gaping wide, ready to swallow the entire fortress and town.
This was the true entrance to the Coldwind Valley Battlefield. Beyond that black realm gate lay a grotto-heaven more than ten li long.
Within this grotto-heaven world, spatial boundary walls enclosed every side, but thick masses of mountain rock covered them, making it resemble a narrow valley flanked by steep slopes.
"They say the unusual terrain here allows